Blowsy

Alternative forms

• blowzy

Origin

blowse + -y

Full definition of blowsy

Adjective

1. Having a reddish, coarse complexion, especially with a pudgy face.
• 1861 , w, Silas Marner Chapter s:Silas Marner/Chapter 11, . . . with a face made blowsy by the cold and damp.
• 1913, Louis Joseph Vance, The Day of Days, ch. 13,. . . a man of, say, well-preserved sixty, with a blowsy plump face and fat white side-whiskers.
2. (chiefly of a woman) Slovenly or unkempt, in the manner of a beggar or slattern.
• 1813, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, ch. 8,Her hair so untidy, so blowsy!
3. Unrefined, countrified.
• 1921, John Buchan, The Path of the King, ch. 11,He longed for the warmth and the smells of his favourite haunts—Gilpin's with oysters frizzling in a dozen pans, and noble odours stealing from the tap-room, the Green Man with its tripe-suppers, Wanless's Coffee House, noted for its cuts of beef and its white puddings. He would give much to be in a chair by one of those hearths and in the thick of that blowsy fragrance.